


Ever I Saw Your Face

by hansbekhart



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Dick measuring contest, Docking, Frottage, Jewish Bucky Barnes, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Steve Rogers' serum enhanced dick, They don't talk about their feelings, yeah literally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 11:10:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5926282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hansbekhart/pseuds/hansbekhart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“S’too bad,” Steve says thoughtfully.  He puts his hands back into the bucket, plucks Bucky’s underwear out of the sudsy wad of fabric down at the bottom.  “If you’d gotten some of Erskine’s juice, maybe you’d still be taller than me.”</p><p>It does the trick: Bucky’s eyes flash.  “I am still taller than you,” he says, threatening.  Steve shrugs.  “I <i>am</i>,” Bucky says, louder, and stands up, dripping water and soap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ever I Saw Your Face

  
  
It’s been hours, but when Steve barges back into the little room the SSR’s set aside for him, Bucky’s more or less how Steve left him: sitting up on Steve’s bed, crammed tight in the corner, one still booted foot kicked up on the bed and the other flat on the ground. His arms are folded tight over his chest, and he’s facing towards the door like a dog waiting for its master to come home. The only difference is that his chin’s dipped down into the collar of his open jacket, and his mouth is hanging open, and his eyes are shut tight.

He needs the rest - in fact, when Steve had left, he’d _told_ Bucky to rest - but Steve’s got good news and he doesn’t think twice about crossing the room and grabbing Buck around the shoulders to shake him awake. 

Bucky comes up swinging. For a minute they grapple, noiseless but for the squeak of the bed frame and the hiss of air through Bucky’s teeth. Steve’s grinning, and doesn’t stop when Bucky finally quits fighting and slumps back against the wall, bits of gray paper flaking off onto his shoulders. He scrubs both hands over his face. “Fuck you, Rogers,” he says, muffled and heartfelt through his fingers. 

“Fuck you, _Captain_ Rogers,” Steve says, still grinning. The fingers twitch apart and reveal a hateful blue glare. It flickers over him, shifts a little as Bucky takes in the same uniform Private Rogers was wearing this morning. Steve’s got the gold bars in his pocket, along with a bunch of medals he’s not even sure how he earned - Phillips had tossed a little box over his desk like an afterthought, added threateningly that some people in Washington had wanted to do the honors. Steve hadn’t had the guts to ask for help pinning them on. 

Buck peels one hand off his own face and lays it on Steve’s, shoving him sideways. Steve lets him do it, falls over onto the bed and grins happily, nose full of musty bed smell and musty Bucky smell. “Didn’t you take a bath?” Steve asks. 

“No,” Bucky says. “Captain, huh?” 

“Go take a bath, Buck,” Steve tells him. “That’s an order.” 

The look on Bucky’s face is wonderful. Best of all, he actually does it, grumbling the whole way. The room they’ve put Steve up is on the top floor of a drafty old home, and the roof slants so sharply he’s bumped his head four times on it so far, but it’s got its own bathroom, complete with clawfoot tub and toilet. Bucky gets that far and no further, standing naked and shivering in front of the tub like he’s got no idea how to turn it on. Steve reaches around him to let the water run. 

“S’cold,” Bucky says, petulant. Steve doesn’t pay that any mind; he slips out of the room for the bucket he saw down the hall. When he comes back in Bucky’s still standing there, arms crossed over his chest, frowning down at the tub - but at least the water’s hot. Steve strips off his own jacket, rolls up his sleeves. He fills the bucket first, gathers up the underthings Bucky’d left strewn on the floor, and dumps them in. 

His clothes stink - like gunpowder and old sweat, like the damp crotch of Bucky’s underwear, like socks in the wintertime. But this, like nothing else these days, is familiar: the slosh of water as Bucky sticks one foot and then the other into the water, kicking a little bit as his skin warms up. At home Steve would’ve had a box of powdered soap to do their laundry with, and the sound of music and car horns drifting in through their window. He makes do: peels a sliver of soap off the bar from his kit, hands the rest of it over to Bucky while Steve works up a lather between his hands. 

They wash. With his hair slicked back, Bucky starts to look more like himself. Steve watches out of the corner of his eye as Bucky rubs soap over his shoulders, arms contorting to get suds down over his back, hunching to wash his balls and the crack of his ass. This too, feels like home, and all the times they’d sat like this. Sometimes they’d left the board covering half the tub, and played dominoes until Bucky’s skin was as shriveled and pruney as old Landau’s, their neighbor down in 1A. 

Bucky’s watching Steve too. He’s got a strange look on his face, one that Steve doesn’t recognize. 

“You’re different,” Bucky says, abruptly. 

Steve pauses, thumbnails digging into a stubborn bloodstain on the collar of Bucky’s undershirt. He looks up, lifts his eyebrows towards the sky, and meets Bucky’s eyes square on. “No foolin,” he says, dry as a bone, and goes back to his wash. 

“You’re happy,” Bucky says, and the tone of his voice is strange too. 

“Took a hell of a lot to get here,” Steve says, and Bucky laughs. 

“Captain America,” he says, wondering, but then doesn’t say anything after that. When Steve looks up again Bucky’s staring down at himself, that same look on his face. 

“Wash that soap outta your hair,” Steve tells him, and Bucky shifts up a little, curling his shoulders between spread knees so he can pour cupped handfuls of water over his head. It cascades down his back in thin rivulets, forking over the knobs of his spine, sharper than Steve remembers it being. 

“They put you in a box,” Bucky says, abruptly. “That’s what you said, they put you in a box.” 

“Yeah,” Steve says. He lifts Bucky’s undershirt out of the bucket, turns a careful eye over it. That bloodstain’s set, nothing to be done about that - but at least it doesn’t stink anymore. “Stark called them Vita-Rays.” 

He drops the shirt back into the bucket, rolls his shoulders out. In Brooklyn his back would’ve started hurting already; it hurt all the time, sometimes less, sometimes more, but especially when he’d be fool enough to sit bent over a washtub or an easel. He looks over at Bucky, who’s hunched over like he’s the one with a twisted spine, one hand pulling his hair out to the full length of it, his other loose between his legs. 

“They didn’t put you in a box,” Steve says, and Bucky shakes his head, still staring up at the soapy ends of his hair. 

“What if they were gonna, though,” he says, after a moment. “You think they woulda turned me into that - that -” He can’t finish the sentence, and buries his fist in his hair for real, yanking it down over his face so hard it has to hurt. 

Steve dips his hands back into the bucket, gives them a little rinse. He leans over and pinches the grubby skin under Bucky’s ear, tugs upwards. “Nope,” he says. “Still attached, and ugly as ever.” 

“Hah hah,” Buck says, and bats his hand away. 

“S’too bad,” Steve says thoughtfully. He puts his hands back into the bucket, plucks Bucky’s underwear out of the sudsy wad of fabric down at the bottom. “If you’d gotten some of Erskine’s juice, maybe you’d still be taller than me.” 

It does the trick: Bucky’s eyes flash. “I am still taller than you,” he says, threatening. Steve shrugs. “I _am_ ,” Bucky says, louder, and stands up, dripping water and soap. 

Steve stands too, and grips Bucky’s arms to steady him, coming out of the bath. Bucky returns the favor so that Steve can toe each of his shoes off, and they stand back to back, Bucky’s wet skin pressing into Steve’s shoulder blades. He feels the flat edge of Bucky’s hand knock against the back of his skull, and come up short. 

“Oh, you son of a whore,” Bucky breathes. 

Steve turns around, grinning. Bucky turns around too. His calves bump up against the tub as he steps back, dragging his eyes up and over Steve’s new body. There’s that look on his face again; there’s his chin, tucking down into his chest, that troubled look in his eyes. Steve takes him by the shoulders, squeezes them together a little so Bucky will look back up. 

He holds his hands up, keeping them apart at the width Bucky’s shoulders. He reaches up, taps his thumbs against the balls of his shoulder: Bucky’s smaller there too now, narrower than Steve is. Still frowning, Bucky repeats the motion, but in reverse: he touches his fingertips to Steve’s ribs, right about where the stripes start on the costume. Where Steve’s shoulders used to be, he guesses. Bucky drags his hands up, to where Steve’s shoulders are now, measures them against his own. Then biceps, then hips, and then he grabs Steve’s hand and presses it palm to palm against his own. 

Steve’s hands had always been a little large, and on the body he has now they’re a little small, and here in London this, if nothing else, is the same as it was in Brooklyn: their middle fingers line up exactly, Bucky edges him out on the length of his thumbs, and Steve wins by a nose with the pointer finger on his left hand, where Bucky had broken his on someone else’s nose, and been left a little crooked ever after. 

Bucky breathes out, hard like he’d been punched. “What about me?” he asks, quietly. 

Bucky’s mother-naked, unselfconscious. He lifts his chin up, and waits for Steve to look his fill. He’s thinner. Mostly in the face, which has lost the baby softness in his cheeks that he shipped out with. His skin is as pale as February, and gray with the sudsy, dirty water he hadn’t quite rinsed off. Steve touches him anyway: the span of Bucky’s shoulders. The solidity of his rib cage, the taut lines of his belly, which shiver under Steve’s fingertips. He could’ve done this blind, how well he knows the shapes of Bucky’s body. 

“Just the same,” Steve says, and finally, Bucky nods. 

He keeps touching Steve though, curious now. Steve lets his hands drop to his side, lets Bucky explore. Bucky pushes on his chest, like he’s testing the bounce of a mattress. He lifts one of Steve’s arms, curls it up and to the side. Obligingly, Steve flexes. Bucky laughs and curls both hands around Steve’s bicep: his fingers don’t quite meet. 

He shoves Steve, lightly - and this time Steve doesn’t let him, stays rooted in place. Bucky does it again, a little harder, trying to get Steve to rock back on his heels. No joy on that one either, except they’re both laughing now, like kids. 

Bucky looks up suddenly, his grin turning sly. “Hey,” he says. “What about the rest of you? Huh?” 

Steve blinks at him, and then he gets it. It’s only months of practice that keep him from tearing off the fragile buttons keeping his fly closed, a hard enough job even when he’s not rushed and eager like this. One button pops off anyway as he shoves his pants and underwear down, pinging off the side of the tub and falling to the floor. Neither of them look; they both stare down as Steve takes his dick in hand and lifts it up, offering it for inspection. 

Bucky whistles, long and low. “Well now,” he says, soft. “Wouldja look at that.” 

Then - Steve’s breath catches - Bucky puts his hand around his own dick and pulls it away from his body, shuffling forward until the tip of it nearly touches Steve’s hip: comparing the two of them. 

The first time they’d ever done something like this they’d been thirteen or so, a month past Bucky’s first growth spurt. Steve had been so jealous of him, of the hair that had abruptly sprouted all over Bucky’s groin, of the sudden, unexpected girth of him - and how embarrassed he’d been of his own childish body, still soft and bare, almost unchanged from when they’d been small enough to take baths together. 

Now they’re much of a size, being almost the same height now. Bucky’s cut the way all his people are, but Steve’s years past the strangeness of it. They both stare down at themselves, lost in contemplation, and then Bucky makes a dissatisfied noise and puts his other hand on Steve’s dick, pulling it flush against his own from root to tip. Steve hisses between his teeth: startled by the soft, heated skin. He’s hardening in Bucky’s hand, but that’s okay. Bucky is too, getting big and thick, the head of his dick pressing a wet kiss on Steve’s hip, and leaving no doubt: Steve is, just the tiniest bit, bigger here now too. 

Bucky licks his lips. His hand squeezes around Steve’s dick, and Steve shudders, rocks forward on his heels and puts both hands on Bucky’s arms, steadying himself. Bucky’s playing with him, no longer just holding and measuring. Bucky’s touch is bold, but curious - and this too throws Steve back into Brooklyn memories. It’d been the same the first time Bucky’d ever touched him, entranced with the strangeness of Steve’s foreskin, his little cock and heavy balls. He tugs on Steve’s foreskin, rolls it between his thumb and forefinger, stretching and then pushing it back down so that the head pops out, like a little turtle. 

“Buck,” Steve says, urgently. 

“Mm,” Bucky says, inattentive, and shifts his hips back, just far enough that he can line them up tip to tip, and gently roll Steve’s foreskin over the head of his own dick. He’s wet; he’s dripping, and the feel of it is slick and heavenly, almost painful as Bucky squeezes them together. Steve’s hips jerk forward, and his fingertips dig into Bucky’s shoulders. 

“ _Buck,_ ” Steve gasps. They’re both breathing hard now, Bucky flushed all the way down his chest, one hand keeping them glued together, working and rubbing Steve’s skin over the both of them, the other on Steve’s hip, holding him in place. But it’s not enough, and Steve drops a hand down to his own dick, covering all the places Bucky isn’t touching him. They move closer, chests bumping, knuckles knocking. Curled up onto his toes, gasping, Bucky’s at the exact right height to drop his forehead onto Steve’s shoulder. 

He comes shuddering, panting fast and loud against Steve’s neck, his jizz spattering over Steve’s hand and dick, and the hot slickness of it is enough that Steve comes too, his cheek pressed against the crown of Bucky’s head. 

They stand together, breathing hard. Steve’s hips push up, reflexively, and a little more jizz drools out of the head of his dick. He smears it between his fingers, rubs them over his dick just to give himself a little shiver. His shoulder is damp, where Bucky’s face is pressed against it. When they separate Steve turns away, busies himself with washing his hands and his dick off under the tap, giving Buck a moment if he needs it. They don’t talk, as they finish washing up - Buck climbs back into the tub and gets down on his knees to rinse under the running tap, and then rinses out his clean clothing as Steve hands them over. They hang them over the lip of the tub to dry. 

Bucky rummages through Steve’s duffle without asking, comes up with a pair of underwear and an undershirt. There’s also a pair of tight fitting blue shorts and a pair of blue tights in the bag, which Bucky throws at Steve’s head while his back is turned. “Shaddup,” Steve tells him, and throws them back, hitting him square in the chest. Bucky laughs. 

Steve’s underthings fit Bucky well enough, and once he’s part way to being dressed he seems a little more settled. He sits on the bed and lights a cigarette, balancing his elbows on his knees, and watches Steve get dressed. “This don’t bother you no more?” he asks, meaning the cigarette, and that’s all they say until Steve digs the little box out of his jacket pocket and starts trying to pin medals on himself in the little brass mirror. 

“You even know where those go?” Bucky asks, after a minute of watching Steve struggle. 

“Sure,” Steve says, but Bucky’s already sauntering over, taking the box from Steve’s hand with a kindly look. He leaves his cigarette on the windowsill, and the smoke wraps around them as Bucky takes a look at the prizes Steve’s won. The look on his face is almost as impressed as when he’d seen Steve’s new dick. 

He starts with the bars, mouth pushed up in concentration as he pins each one to the center of Steve’s shoulder tabs, reaching behind himself for his cigarette before starting on the lapel pins. 

“They don’t gotta be perfect,” Bucky says, a little garbled around the cigarette. “If I was gonna send you out in front of the brass I’d make sure you looked like a model fuckin soldier. But no one’s gonna care down at the pub, and I ain’t got the patience.” 

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve says, his chin tipped patiently towards the ceiling, letting Bucky have his way. “Didn’t know we were going to a pub.” 

“Sure we are, Captain,” Bucky tells him. “I got some guys I want you to meet. The guys who got stuck in the same cage as me, back there.” 

“Poor bastards,” Steve says, sympathetically. Bucky reaches up and twists his ear between two knuckles, not quite hard enough to hurt even back in Brooklyn. 

“Poor bastards is right,” he says, and shrugs. “We watched each other’s backs. They’re - they’ll be good to have in a tight spot.” 

He steps away, casts a critical eye over Steve and all his pins and medals. The mirror’s right next to Steve, but he doesn’t look at it, waiting instead for Bucky to say he’s ready. “If you trust them, then I trust them,” he says, and Bucky steps back in close, unpins the wings from Steve’s lapel and repins them an infinitesimal distance to the left. Steve says puts a hand over Bucky’s, stopping him from fidgeting. "Come on," he says. "Let's not keep 'em waiting."  



End file.
